E 649 
.W31 
Copy 1 



^U/c ^C , /^^^C 




a 



u^ ^ (Ut . CO'*^^^^—^ 'r- 



ONE-AND-TWKNTY YEARS FROM SUMTER 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



FRANCIS WASHBURN POST NO. 92 G, A. R. 



BY 



JOHN D. WASHBURN 



ONE-AND-TWENTY YEARS FROM SUMTEK 



AN 



ORATION 



DELIVKRED BEFOUE 



FRANCIS WASHBURN POST NO. 92 G. A. R. 



AT BRIGHTON 



ON SUNDAY JUNE 4tii 1H8 2 



JOHN D. WASHBURN 



\Y O R C E S T E R 

PKESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON 

1882 






OXK iniNDUKI) AND FIFTY COPIES. 



61608 

•••.5 



^ 

^ 



AlLOQUAR ? AUDIERONE UNQUAM TUA FACTA LOQUENTEM ? 

NUKQUAM EGO TE, VITA FRATEU AMABILIOK, 
AdSPICIAM POSTIIAC ? AT CERTE SEMPER AMABO, 

Semper m(esta tua carmina morte canam. 

> ** i 9 Catullus. 



ORATION. 



Twenty-one years ! Twenty-one years of grow- 
ing change from infant helplessness to full effective 
manhood ! The boy whose eyes first opened to the 
light of heaven on a summer morning, months after 
the cannon of rebellion began to echo through the 
land, comes of age to-day. To what a heritage of 
blessing does he succeed ! Peace, whose tones 
were silent at his birth amid the din of arms, now 
fills the air with sweet harmonious voices. Plenty, 
from golden overflowing horn, scatters through all 
the land abundant stores. Prosperity, unprece- 
dented in the world's history and measureless, has 
multiplied the nation and increased its joy. Educa- 
tion, whose dominion and primacy, early gained, 
were always maintained in the North, now begins 
to spread the area of her conquests over the cotton 
plantations and rice-fields of the South. Freedom, 
no longer sectional, confers her great franchise on 
every member of the human race throughout the 
length and breadth of our country. No knee is 
bent, except to God; no neck is bowed beneath 
a servile yoke. And amid the freemen of an 



6 Oration. 

enfranchised land, this boy takes his place to-day, 
and assumes with proud exultant pi-oclamation the 
role and dignity of an American citizen. 

What was the glory of the Roman youth, though 
of noble rank, whose lofty boast and ample shield 
of protection throughout all the woi'ld it was that 
he was a Roman citizen, compared with that this 
boy partakes to-day? For it is in the sum of 
blessings of mankind that the emblems and evi- 
dence of true glory are to be found; and what was 
the sum of mankind's blessings in imperial Rome ? 
Colossal empire; golden speech, at once rich and 
epigrammatic, which the world has, alas, let die; 
great villas by blue waters; great conquests over 
barbarous hordes; for the few, regal magnificence 
and state ; for the many, oppression, ignorance, the 
extortions of Verres, the proscriptions of Sulla, the 
exterminations of Ca3sar, the glorious light of 
Christianity denied to all ! 

Rejoice then, young man, in all the strength and 
dignity of this new manhood. Welcome to the 
glorious freedom of which you are to-day made 
free ! Justly may we here congratulate you upon 
your birthday, and mingle those congratulations 
with our memorial, for they are kindred, and their 
source and foundation are the same. 

But what sa}'^ you of your memories of war, and 
of the cries that i*ent our hearts as they came to us 



Oration. 7 

on every Southern breeze, from bloody field and 
groaning hospital and crowded prison pen ? He 
is dumb. Memory tells him nothing of all these 
things. For him they live in tradition and history 
alone. Born North or South, he never saw a man 
in arms against our country. Born North or South, 
he cannot remember that he ever saw a slave. The 
slave, outraged and oppressed, although in shallow 
plantation mirth his hollow laugh at times rang out 
as if in mockery of his wrongs, the slave, guiltless 
of all but enduring, yet cause of all that sacrifice 
and bloodshed, is a myth to him. The last chain 
had fallen before he left his cradle. The lash, the 
fetter, the auction-block, revive in him no more of 
active remembrance than do the rack, the thumb- 
screw or the pillory. The great wave of advancing 
civilization has rolled over all alike. Without those, 
there would have been no war, no sacrifice, no 
memorial; but the memory of this child, this youth, 
this man and sovereign now, goes not back to one 
of them. 

But to us who can remember, in what crowded, 
mingled, endless succession, do these memories 
come ! Great deeds of valor — alternate hoj^es and 
fears — long days of hardship in field and camp — 
long nights of watching and prayer in homes no 
earthly comforter could cheer — the wasting march 
— the starry bivouac — the prison pen — the eman- 



8 Oration. 

cipation of a race — the welcome home of the 
returning- brave whom victory crowned — the tears 
which ceased at length to flow not because sorrow 
had waned but theii- fount was dry — thanksgivings 
to the Loi'd of Hosts whose arm of power had 
ovei--ruled, for the triumph which waited on his 
will and for the ai'my of patriot martyrs He had 
received and welcomed to the everlasting towers ! 

Yet, even for us who I'emember, how vague and 
indistinct and shadowy with lapse of time have 
many of memory's ])ictures grown. How hard 
it is sharjily to define the outlines I'ecollection 
draws of all but histoi-ic facts and deeds that live 
in the record of the material page ! Try to review 
the long procession of those early dead. Can yon 
read the features right, when on the gloom you 
strive to paint the face you knew ? Just as you 
seem to have fixed them clearly on the canvas of 
memory, the ways in which they walk ai-e shaded, 
and they melt and fade away. You see the picture, 
but the hues are faint and mix with hollow masks 
of night. — Yet shall we know them when we meet 
and see once more that look of love with which 
even now they watch us from the quiet shore. And 
bless we kind Natui'e that she lets these pictures 
fade. Who could endure their brightness if it 
shone undimmed thi'ongh all* the years which divide 
us, granting our sorrow no eclipse ? Whose heart 



Oration. 9 

would not fail in looking back, save that the path 
we came by is shaded ever by the growing hour V 

But the recollection of glorious deeds, heroic 
sacrifice, manly devotion, lofty patriotism, must not 
die or fade. Bright examples must ever be cited to 
our ingenuous youth. The restless activities and 
multitudinous industries of the nation well may 
pause on each succeeding Memorial Day, and the 
voice of grateful thanksgiving for the patriot dead 
be raised by all the living. 

And here upon this sacred day, fit place and 
hour, we add our voices of devout thanksgiving 
and praise as well as of tender memorial, to those 
of the past week whose plaintive echoes have 
hardly died away. We keep the day in memory 
of all the mighty host of patriot martyrs. Yet I 
could not if I would, nor if I made the attempt 
would your hearts commend it, divorce fi-om this 
occasion its personal and affectionate associations. 
What a stony heart were mine could I fail to 
remember in this solemn memorial hour that the 
youthful patriot in whose honor you have named 
your Post was the brother of my love and the 
pride of my early home; that not for any merit or 
eloquence of my own but simply because I was 
and am his brother, you have asked 'me to add my 
voice to these harmonious notes of requiem and 
reverent tones of prayer ! Once I could not have 



10 Oration. 

done this, nor calmly stood in 3^onr presence in the 
early years of sorrow, some of you his fellow- 
soldiers mingling your tears with mine in personal 
bereavement, all grieving over sorrows of your 
own or filled with tender pity for some breaking 
heart. I should have stood mute before you, and the 
clear utterance of the lips would have been lost amid 
the heavings of the laboring breast. Yet, not even 
then should I have stood ashamed before you, as 
conscious of too much of human weakness. For 
we were three brothers and in the closest bonds 
of brotherhood united. Separation, which comes to 
all in this changing life of ours, had never tdienated 
us HI affection, nor dimmed the brightness of 
fraternal love. The sun-light of a pure and edu- 
cated New England home was always shining for 
us, and to it from the laboratory, the counting- 
room, the university, we were always returning. 
In it almost together our happy days began; the 
same gentle influences surrounded us and kept us 
ever in harmonious sympathy and accord. So were 
we truly 

'' one in kiiul, 

As moulded like in Nature's mint; 
And liill and wood and field did print 
The same sweet forms in either mind. 

" For us the same cold streamlet curled 

Through all his eddying coves; the same 
All winds that roam tlie twilight came 
In whispers of the beauteous world. 



Oration. 1 1 

" At one dear knee we proffered vows, 
One lesson from one book we learned, 
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlets turned 
To black and brown on kindred bi-ows." 

And one had fallen in those fiery lines before Port 
Hudson; together we had laid him by the pleasant 
shore and in the hearing of the wave, amid the 
sombre glories of the autumn leaves; and now the 
other, the youngest of our house and remnant of 
our hope, had passed, in all the glow of youth and 
manly beauty, through glory's morning gate, in 
that triumphant and immortal hour when the last 
and central towei's of the great Rebellion came 
crashing down. 

I ask you not to pardon me, nor fear unkindly 
criticism as though I made undue parade of person- 
al sacrifice, and came jarring in upon the hai-mo- 
nies of consecrated public memorial with private 
sorrow's barren song. These words of mine have 
forced themselves into utterance, because it is I 
who speak and you who listen. Yet should even 
these have been repressed, but that such sorrows 
are representative of those of a hundred homes of 
New England, nay, typical only of loftier sacrifices 
and more crushing griefs. What claim had I to 
human sympathy, though by the fate of battle left 
for the time desolate and alone, compared to the 
widow who gave her only son whom stern conscrip- 
tion could not have torn fi-om her maternal arms ? 



12 Oration. 

The sister gave her only brother. The poor and 
patriotic household accepted a future of bereave- 
ment, poverty and privation, that their contribution 
to the defence of free institutions might not be 
withheld. " What is my life without my country V " 
exclaimed the philosophic statesman of the ancient 
world. And in kindred strain the philosophic bard 
of the present, just now summoned to the heavenly 
rest, " What avail the plough, or sail, or land, or 
life if Fi-eedom fail ? " But these gave more than 
life. 

Yet had you still reserved, when you offered your 
beloved this willing sacrifice, the hope of immunity 
for them from wounds and death. The chances 
were with you when you sent them forth. Even in 
the imminent deadly breach, the flower of safety 
bloomed for some and perchance for yours. You 
could not have given them to certain death, even 
for your country's salvation. The heart of Brutus 
could not have steeled itself against his son but for 
the crime already committed against his country, 
and the hearts of men have not hardened since the 
stei'n, nay, savage justice of Brutus shocked semi- 
barbarous Rome. You could not have made this 
sacrifice had you known. Would you unmake it 
now ? Mother, will you discrown your darling and 
drag him from the stars to these daily prosaic uses 
of ours, to pursuits of gain which must be dropped 



Oration. 13 

on the brink of the grave before the eager hands 
are full, to strivings foi- i)etty distinctions whieh 
shrink and shi-ivel into nothingness in ihe light of 
the triumph of his patriot death ? For the joy of 
his companionship, dear as it was and would be, 
would you rob him of his glory V Or call you that 
life unfinished and a fragment which answered life's 
great end ? Or has that summer's sun shone too 
briefly which has fringed with gold the ripened 
sheaves of autumn ? 

Nay, counting not the wi-ong you would do him 
should you wrest from his brows the crown he 
weai's for ever among the martyi-s' noble host, are 
you willing-, now that the yeai-s of keenest sorrow 
have passed by, to barter away your honoi-able 
pride in what he did and dared, for all the possibili- 
ties that the earthly futui-e closed ? What is your 
chiefest pride to-day ? The saintly harp of Olney's 
band was tuned to higher strains than praise of 
wealth or earthly honors, of pomp of state, or noble 
birth. Such trifling claims to distinction his lofty 
soul disdained, but based his proud pretensions 
simply upon this, that he was " the son of parents 
passed into the skies." And you are the mother of 
a patriot martyr, and from your loins has sprung a 
lineage of the stars ! 

Nay, once again, leaving out his glory and your 
pride, will you give up all and take all back? Take 



14 Oration. 

back his life, his hope, his aspirations, his compan- 
ionship, and give up all that the tem])oral sacrifice 
of these contributed to gain ; take back a distracted 
country and the rule of slavery's blighting sceptre; 
take back that night of wrong and oppression, give 
up the light of Freedom's moi*ning star ? By the 
decrees of that Power whose judgments in the end 
are merciful, it was ordained that this life should 
perish with others that the nation might live. Will 
you let the nation perish, that the life which was 
dearer to you than your own may live again here ? 
Will you let this hope of humanity be extinguished 
or even abated, that for the remnant of your earthly 
days that deai- companionship may be vouchsafed 
you here once more ? 

I know your answer though unspoken. Your 
tears may fall again, and the full heait rain through 
your sight its over-flow. Yet, though with the 
Psalmist your eyes gush out with water, with him 
you forget not God's law. For all of pain and 
sacrifice you shall have double, and thi'ough all of 
deprivations to which his loss has doomed your 
earthly days, there will always breathe the whisper- 
ed consolation, " The country lived." And almost 
while I am speaking a voice of plaintive yearning 
for consolation like yours comes to us in tender 
accents across the sea. It is the utterance of that 
loving wife, widowed, not in the noble strife of 



Oration. 15 

battle, but by Assassination's cruel hand. "I would 
never grudge the sacrifice of my darling's life," 
hear Lady Frederick Cavendish say, "if it only leads 
to putting down this frightful spirit of evil in 
Ireland. He himself would never have grudged it, 
if thereby death could do more than life." 

See then, how we are not bowed down. See even, 
and think it not unseemly, how we stand erect in 
honorable pride that it was our lofty privilege to 
make such conti-ibutions to the welfare of our race. 
Nor of our race alone ; — forsaken and prostrate 
Ethiopia stands up and sti-etches out her thankful 
hands to God, blessing us also who gave, but next to 
God those whom we gave. We were stricken ; our 
heai'ts were oppressed ; we sank like lead in the 
mighty waters of affliction; all their waves and 
storms swept over us, even over our soitl. Yet came 
we forth from all our sorrows, came up from dark- 
ness into the glorious day, and bear again the bur- 
dens of life in sunshine and with joy, because we 
never lost the whisper of that consolation, " The 
country lived." 

But if so much of comfort had been denied us ; if 
these loved ones of ours had died and our country 
perished with them, where then could we have look- 
ed for that sustaining consolation, in the strength 
of which we are now so confident and strong ? Let 
the generous heart, on this day which we have set 



16 Oration. 

apart for the commemoration of our own beloved, 
forg-et not those who have mourned without our 
sohice, nor the kindly eye refuse to let fall for them 
one sympathizing teai*. No unrelenting voices from 
the chambers of the dead forbid us to remember, in 
Christian charity and sympathy, that the parents 
and brothers, and sisters and children of those who 
died in the service of " the lost cause," mourn those 
whom they loved as dearly as we loved ours, and 
who died in vain. 

How touched was my heart when but a few weeks 
since, in the early days of spring, I stood among the 
memorials of the Confederate dead, in the beautiful 
cemeteries of Richmond ! Here grief that was 
denied our consolations had raised its monuments 
to the memory of those who died in vain. How 
moving those inscriptions which told of valor in a 
cause which never had a rational hope, of lives laid 
on the altar of fruitless sacrifice. 

" In memory of sixteen tiioi'sand Conkkdekatk 

SOLDIERS FROM THIRTEEN StaTES." 

" Memoria in AETEUNA." 

"The EPiTATii OF THE soldip:r who fai.i.s with 

HIS COUNTRY IS WRITTEN IN THE HEAIITS OK 
THOSE WHO LOVE THE RiOIIT AND 

HONOR THE Brave." 

Let not the generous heart proclaim a rude dis- 
sent, noi- those who honor the brave refuse to honor 



Oration. 17 

these. Let even those who love the right drop a 
tear for them, for though we can never admit that 
they were right, and the God of battles by his sub- 
lime arbitrament proclaimed that they were not, 
He only knows it if they did not think they were; and 
for this opinion they hesitated not to die. But alas, 
how futile and illusory the consolation! They fell 
not with their country. It was a myth and dreary 
phantasy that they had a country which fell. The 
great Republic, which was their country though in 
wild and strange delusion they had repudiated their 
allegiance, fell not, and the country which in piti- 
able eri'or they thought they were dying with, was 
never born. No harsh vindictive judgments could 
find a harbor in my breast as I stood sadly by these 
monuments. Even Nature seemed to join in sor- 
rowing pity for those who had so little of consola- 
tion, not less than for those who bravely died in 
fruitless struggle against legitimate authority, and 
the tears of April dropped through the slanting sun- 
light on the graves, and stretched the bow of prom- 
ise across the clouds. Not as criminals and outlaws 
could I think of them in that tender hour, gallant, 
heroic, as so many of them had jji'oved themselves 
on so many a field of renown, but rather as those 
whom a giant and overpowering delusion had swept 
along (m its resistless flood. 

And when, a few weeks later, but under like con- 
3 



18 Oration. 

ditions of the opening year, the soft airs of spring- 
time breathing round me, the gentle watei's of the 
Nashua murmuring by, I stood where m}^ soldier 
bi-others he side by side under the simple inscription 
" Pi'o Patria," the strength of this mighty consola- 
tion, all the more from the fresh and impressive 
contrast, sustained m}"^ heart. Not with but for 
their country they fell and laid down the bright 
pi'omise of their glowing years. A living country 
is their monument, and utters its myriad voices 
of gi-atitude and remembrance on each successive 
Memorial Day. 

A living country, one, undivided and indivisible, 
peace throughout its borders, the authority of its 
government undisputed and absolute, from Atlantic 
to Pacific, from Supei'ior to the Gulf, the results of 
the war accepted everywhere, its primal cause for 
ev^er ended ! Not without a purpose did I remind 
you that men are to-day exercising the I'ights of 
sovereignty in our land, who were not born when 
the South committed itself to the fatal policy of re- 
bellion, and within the period of whose intelligent 
consciousness no slave has trod the territory of 
the Republic. For questions of statesmanship arise 
and even now are pending in the legislature of the 
country, to the broad and generous solution of 
which these considerations are material, and to 
which I cannot think it inappropriate to I'efer, even 



Oration. 19 

oil this consecrated day. How to administe-r the 
amnesty of the government towai'ds those who 
twenty-one years ago took up arms against it, is a 
question now before the Judiciary Committee of the 
Senate of the United States. The sohition is delay- 
ed ])artly, as was alleged in debate, that the views 
of the people of the North upon it might be made 
known. Suffer me then briefly to state in what 
foi-m the question rose, what is involved in it, some 
things that were said upon it, and, as one of the hum- 
blest citizens of the Republic, to indicate an opinion 
as to the solution to which a broad statesmanship 
not less than a generous Christian charity seems to 
me to point. A few words will suffice to state the 
question, nor will the argument be long by which I 
reach a conclusion as to the policy which, aftei- this 
lapse of years, it becomes a great, triumphant nation- 
ality to adopt towards the survivors of those who, 
its citizens then as now, revolted against its legiti- 
mate authority and defied its arms. 

A bill for the relief of Dr. A. Sidney Tebbs from 
a disqualification to serve as surgeon in the United 
States ai-my, having been previously referred to the 
Committee on Military Afl'airs, was reported by that 
committee with an amendment striking out all after 
the enacting clause and inserting " that Section 
1218 of the Revised Statutes of the United States 
be, and the same is hereby repealed." The section 



20 Oration. 

reads as follows : " Sec. 1218. No person who has 
served in any capacity in the military, naval or civil 
service of the so-called Confederate States, or of 
either of the States in insurrection during the late 
rebellion, shall be appointed to any position in the 
Army of the United States." 

This bill was, after a discussion which extended 
through portions of several days, referred to the 
Judiciary Committee. Its immediate passage was 
favored mainly by Democratic senators, who were 
apparently unanimous in its support. It was 
opposed by some of the Republican senators (indeed 
the majority of them seemed opposed to it), and on 
the question of reference the vote was a strictly 
party one. Some Republican senators, who would 
probably have favored the bill by their votes, if the 
question had come directly upon its passage, favored 
the reference on the ground that it was desirable to 
have it considered whether, in addition to relief 
from this special disability, other propositions might 
not be embodied in the bill looking to complete 
amnesty. The discussion was not free from bitter- 
ness ; no discussion probably ever will be, which 
involves the question of the permanence of these 
disabilities or their removal. And it is because of 
the constant renewal of this bitterness, which every 
discussion of bills for relief in special cases 
involves, that the question of complete and absolute 



Oration. 21 

amnesty is not a sentimental one, as sometimes 
elaimed, but one preeminently praetical. Kepubliean 
senators said the North would never admit that the 
South was right. Senators from the South said 
that they did not repent noi- ask to be forgiven 
though they accepted the results of the war with- 
out reserve, and claimed a loyalty to the govern- 
ment as full and perfect as if they had never 
rebelled against it. 

Senator Edmunds said, "I think that the Rebellion 
being over, and over for good, it is better to preserve 
some everlasting monument, that there was a right 
side and a wrong side to it. There cannot be two 
right sides to such a question, and as the govern- 
ment turned out to be on the right side, I think it 
better that this perpetual statute book should hold 
some unextinguished memoiial that we knew the 
dijfference between one side and the other." 

Senator Vest said, "We simply ask for the 
legitimate consequences of what the senator and his 
colleagues say when they profess to admit that we 
are worthy to represent sovereign States upon this 
floor, as Senators of the United States. What 
inconsistency is it, when we are admitted here and 
our brain, such as it is, is given to the public ser- 
vice, and yet we are told that our hearts, our blood, 
our arms are unfit for the military or naval service 
of our common country." 



22 Oration. 

Senator Sherman said, " I have intended when 
this subject was brought before the Senate to vote 
for the i-epeai of Sec. 1218 of the Revised Statutes 
which excludes from serving in the army in any 
capacity, persons who were engaged during the 
war in the rebel service, and also to vote to repeal 
all provisions of law in regard to test oaths, and to 
be liberal also in the construction of the third clause 
of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution. 
* * * All that is left of the provisions growing 
out of the war affecting any persons who had been 
engaged in the i"ebel service, are contained in these 
enactments to which I have alluded, most of which 
have spent their force. While I shall vote from 
time to time as I will, for properly framed bills to 
remove these disabilities, I want to impress upon the 
Senate, and if I can upon Senators from the South- 
ern States who fall within the description contained 
in those bills, that these laws were wise in them- 
selves, just, liberal, generous, more so than you 
can find in the records of any civil war in times 
past. While we remove their disabilities now, we 
do not repeal laws unjust when made, but laws that 
were wise when they were made, but which have 
ceased to be operative on facts as they now exist." 

Senator Beck said, " I have before that committee 
a bill to remove the political disabilities of all men. 
That bill was also recommended by General Grant, 



Oration. 23 

President of the United States, as early as 187-5, in 
these words, ' I renew my previous recommendation 
to Congress for general amnesty. The number en- 
gaged in the kite rebellion yet laboi'ing under dis- 
abilities is very small, but enough to keep up a con- 
stant irritation.' " 

Senator George said, " Sir, we acknowledge no 
inferioi'ity, we confess to no crime, we profess no 
repentance, we ask no forgiveness. But we ac- 
knowledge oui' defeat and we acknowledge also that 
separation is no longer desirable. * * * ^e 
may have erred, sir. I shall not discuss that now, 
but if we eri'ed we committed the fault of freemen 
jealous of their rights. Our cause was just and holy 
to us, and it was defended with a courage, endur- 
ance, and self denial which brings honor, not shame, 
on American manhood. If fidelit}' to convictions of 
conscience, if courage and endurance in adverse 
foi'tune, if a heroic devotion to principle sincerely 
entertained, if love of country, if veneration for the 
memory and example of a great and glorious ances- 
try be titles to the respect and admiration of man- 
kind, the conduct of the Southern people in the late 
war is worthy to be recorded on the same l)right 
page of the history of the human race, on which are 
written the proud achievements of the Noi'th." 

Senator Maxey quoted Sumner's famous preamble ; 
" Whei'eas, the national unity and good will among 



24 Oration. 

fellow-citizens can be assured only through oblivion 
of past difterences and it is contrary to the usages 
of civilized nations to perpetuate the memory of 
civil war" — and also, the letter, in which after the 
hasty censure which had followed this declara- 
tion, he says, " Never was I moi-e sure of any pro- 
position than that for which I am assailed. When 
well enough I will place it beyond all question, 
showing reason, history, and every civilized nation 
for it." 

Much more was said, other senators added their 
contril)utions to the debate, and some things were 
eloquently spoken ; yet after all it was but the dreary 
threshing over of the same old and worn out straw. 
What generous and all-powerful victor wants the 
vanquished to profess a wordy repentance, when the 
victory is complete, the foe disarmed and prostrate, 
the cause of quarrel removed, everlasting guarantees 
provided against its possible revival, and seventeen 
years of peace rolled over all ? For one, I do not 
desire to see the gallant though misguided and per- 
tinacious foe humiliated beyond the necessities which 
recent war imposed. I bow to those necessities while 
they last; I hail with joy the day when they may be 
truly said to have passed by. I would not, directly 
nor indirectly, require the fellow-citizens who by our 
compulsion laid down their arms so many years ago, 
in whose future co-oi3eration (and their children's) 



Oration. 25 

in our common country's advancement I expect 
to take an honorable pride, to utter cringing 
language of apology, to assent to declarations that 
they were for ever wrong, nor longer to submit to 
political disabilities while claiming them as my 
fellow-citizens once more. I would have my coun- 
try, magnificent and irresistible in its power, as 
grand and universal in its amnesties, and were I the 
senator of a Northern State, partisan Republican 
though I am and representative of the personal 
sorrows of the war, I would, had I the intellectual 
ability, lead, not follow, the movement to repeal all 
disabilities, in full and confident faith that blessing 
would ensue. 

What need we fear ? The men who organized 
the Rebellion are passing down into and through and 
beyond the shadows of the dark valley. More than 
half of them are dead, and half the remainder falter- 
ing under the infirmities of age. More native citi- 
zens are now living in the country who have come 
of age since the war began than were of age and 
living in it at that day, and before the growing 
power of this fresh new life, old influences for evil 
fade away and die.^ 

Go through the South. Almost everywhere you 



' I desire to express my obligation to Gen. F. A. Wallvcr, wlio, at my 
request, carefully examined the statistics, testing thereby the accuracy 
of this statement. He found it to be strictly correct, and that the 
excess cauuot be less than half a million. 
4 



26 Oration. 

will see manifestations of loyalty to the institutions 
of the country, and of content that the old things 
have passed away. Here and there it is doubtless 
true you will meet dissent, and the voice of discon- 
tent is raised, that the greatness and prestige of the 
South have departed, and occasionally are heard 
mntterings over the burdens that a tyrannous power 
has imposed on those who could not withstand. 
But these are not, it seems to me, representative 
voices. "The shallows murmur but the deeps are 
dumb." The great body of the people accept the 
situation as absolutely established, a part submis- 
sively, a part with cheei'ful and appreciative gladness. 
Still more are you impi-essed with their utter inabil- 
ity, had they the disposition, even to attempt any- 
thing against the Republic. Nay, the farther you 
extend your observation the greater is your wonder 
that these scattered tribes could ever, in their 
wildest moments of delirium, have dreamed that they 
could successfully defy the colossal power of the 
North. And the more, too, you are compelled to 
admire, whether you incline to do so or not, the cour- 
age and spirit of self-sacrifice which enabled them, 
against such an ovei'whelming preponderance of 
power, to maintain the unequal strife so long. 

Do you wish these disabilities maintained as 
guarantees of good behavior, and would you thus, 
as it were, hold part of the people as hostages for 



0rati07i. 27 

the rest ? But justice iind reason alike forbid to 
judge the future conduct of a new population for 
whom the light of free institutions has shone 
through all its life, by the past works of others 
who wrought them while they were stumbling in the 
darkness of the night of slavery. 

Do you want a lasting monument that the North 
was right and the South wrong, a monumental proof 
that treason is odious, and on grounds like these will 
you maintain disabling statutes ? But statutes are 
not permanent monuments. The breath ot an 
ephemeral party majority blows upon them and they 
vanish into empty air. A united country, which by 
its power in union and triumph over every foe illus- 
trates alike the odiousness and hopelessness of trea- 
sonable plots against it, is the most lasting and 
noblest monument ; the more noble and convincing 
monument and proof, in proportion as it justly 
boasts itself strong enough to grant to all its sub- 
jects an equal standing before the law. 

Shall we, by repealing these disabling acts, after 
this lapse of years, admit that we were wrong in 
passing them ? God forbid that a doctrine which 
is seldom invoked in the discussion of oi-dinary 
questions of repeal, should be laid down as a i*ock of 
stumbling in the path of a generous conqueror, 
hastening to raise a fallen enemy and release him 
from disabilities which are galling and humiliating, 



28 Oration. 

and no longer needed for defence and protection ! 
Such repeal implies no confession of original error, 
wilful or undesigned. It says that lapse of time, 
change of circumstance, a new population substi- 
tuted for the old, enable us to dispense with further 
guarantees, and that is all. 

Do we need to fortify ourselves by the examples 
of the past, as though this new creation among the 
nations might not, in establishing the boundaries 
and defences of good will and renewed fellowship, 
be a law unto itself ? History is not wanting in 
examples, nor was our great senator at fault, in the 
enunciation of a general historic proposition, when 
he said that it is contrary to the usages of civil- 
ized nations to perpetuate the memory of civil wars. 
I spare you the recital of instances, yet permit me 
to summon before you one illustrious witness, who, 
by acts done before the coming of that divine 
Teacher the burden of whose lessons was love and 
charity to all men and especially our enemies, set a 
memorable example to Christian men throughout 
the ages. In the great civil war in which Caesar 
and Pompey contended for the possession of the 
government of Rome, Pompey was overthrown, 
his army put to utter rout in the battle of Pharsalia, 
and he himself driven an exile and fugitive to meet 
his tragic death beyond the sea. Caesar maintained 
himself in imperial power, and the destinies of the 



Oration. 29 

entire Roman people were in his hands. Yet Sue- 
tonius tells us that before his sudden and unlooked- 
for death, an absolute amnesty was extended to all 
those who had been in arms against him, and every 
disability to hold civil or military office was re- 
moved. " Deyiique, temjjore extremo, etiam quibus 
nondum ignoverat, cunctis in Italiam redire jier- 
misit, magistratusque et imperia capered Yet Caesar 
died within four years after the battle of Pharsalia, 
and forty-four years before the Prince of Peace was 
born. Shall our Chi-istian generosity now shine 
less brightly than that of the heathen conqueror, or 
republican America dare less of charity than im- 
perial Rome ? 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 

■fill 

•^ W13 764 570 1 i 



